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I don't see the DSLR going anywhere anytime soon. The advent of mirrorless cameras does not constitute a life-ending event for DSLR's, or any other type of camera design. The advent of mirrorless simply expands the available pool of camera types, diversifying the options and making it easier for each individual photographer to get the camera gear that best ...

they said rangefinders were going to go the way of the dodo when SLRs were introduced.
They said SLRs were going away when point and shoot cameras were introduced.
They said black and white was dead when colour film was invented.
All are still with us today.

If you shine a torch (flashlight) on a wall and walk forward, the circle of light gets smaller, but brighter at the same time. The principal of the speed booster is the same.
A lens designed for 35mm projects an circle of light at least 43mm in diameter onto the sensor. The sensor in an APS-C format camera has a 28mm diagonal. The "speed booster" ...

DSLRs have expanded massively is terms of features since the 70s, now your entry level DSLR has comparable AF system, speed, shutter as a pro SLR from the 90s!
The D800 pictured has to incorporate many things absent from your 70s SLR
tough weather sealed metal chassis
pop up flash
AF sensor below the reflex mirror (why the camera is taller)
large battery
...

There are both advantages and disadvantages to EVFs. The very best ones with high-resolution and high-refresh rates are actually quite suitable for most uses when well-implemented.
The main disadvantages are:
Lag: There is a short lag between action happening in front of the camera and what you see.
Dynamic-Range: EVFs are small LCD screens and have ...

A few aspects mentioned in your question will be our starting point. Please note, we are not saying each of these issues will be determining factors for every photographer. We're not saying one system is better than the other because of... a or b. Rather they are a response to the question, "...what all should a person consider?" Once considered, each of ...

Major reason is that the DSLR lenses are optimized for Phase Detection. Every component of the lens is tailored towards quick movement and stopping the glass in precisely picked moment. Contrast detection on the other hand works best with stepper motors capable of quickly switching directions so that you can move lenses inside back and forth looking for ...

The Nikon 1 V1 is not a DSLR. It is does not have a reflex mirror.
The V1 has a smaller sensor with 2.7X crop compared to full-frame.
The previous two points make it much smaller than a DSLR, particularly when including lenses.
It does not have an optical viewfinder, instead it uses an EVF with 1.4 megapixels. This gives it a larger and brighter view than ...

There are much more variation between lens lineups designed for mirrorless cameras than DSLRs. A major factor of each lineup is age.
Pentax uses the same K-mount for its K-01 as it does for its DSLRs. This gives it gets a complete lineup of lenses covering a focal-range of 10 to 560mm plus coverage from down to 4.5mm (fisheye) or 8mm (rectilinear) from ...

Those cameras are only limited by the fact that they lack a reflex mirror to form an image through an optical viewfinder. By the same token, DSLRs are limited by the fact they need a reflex mirror in the optical path.
What does that mean?
In terms of image quality, nothing. There are currently mirrorless cameras using the same sensors as DSLR. Even those ...

Have you seen a gallery showing decades old photographs from 35mm film? All mirrorless cameras do better, much better. Do you think those pictures would get rejected today on the grounds of being to grainy, unsharp or lacking contrast?
Gallery quality has much more to do with with content of photographs than anything else. Light, color, gesture says Jay ...

The EOS M has essentially the same image pipeline (sensor / image processor) as the latest digital rebel. You can therefore expect it to produce very high quality images considering the form factor (though not necessarily any better than the competition mirrorless). Image quality should be better than the G series, though similar to the G1X (which has a ...

There are a number of technical quibbles one can make, of which I think two are significant enough to make the "if you arrive late, you better be stunning" argument hold some water. Those are:
Autofocus speed that's far enough behind to be noticeable
Lack of an eye-level EVF or even the option for an add-on one, and statements from Canon indicating that ...

Pros of using an EVF as opposed to the rear LCD screen:
It is easier to see in direct sunlight.
Holding the camera to the eye increases stability and comfort (especially with heavier lenses).
EVFs offers diopter correction so users don't need to wear eyeglasses.

It's called "Nisen Bokeh" and is mainly due to the lens design (though the background plays a part, it's possible to "provoke" this effect with any lens with the right background).
Overcorrected spherical aberration (blur disks which are brighter in the periphery than the centre) is usually to blame. It's showing up more often with the A7 due to the use of ...

Advantages/Disadvantages of electronic viewfinders have been discussed in another question for completeness:
Optical TTL viewfinders are pretty much as sharp as the lens (with small losses for the focus screen and prism). Electronic viewfinders have fixed resolution, which is currently lower than OVFs.
OVFs update in realtime, EVFs have a fixed latency and ...

All other things being equal, yes.
There are two primary reasons why this is so.
To maintain the same amount of field intensity of light over a larger area, a lens used with a larger sensor has to be able to collect more total light than a lens used with a smaller sensor. This means a larger entrance pupil, which usually works out to require a larger ...

I think it's more the latter of your two reasons: the experience, talent, and care of the group who are willing to spend more on higher-end gear, vs. the format size alone, that creates the impression that better cameras make better pictures all by themselves.
Someone who's willing to spend $2000 on a camera body and another $3000 on glass in a brand new ...

I've got good news and bad news for you. And I'll start with the good: we are in the midst of a golden age of cameras, from every tier from entry-level to the enthusiast models you are looking at to the top of the line medium format options. There are hundreds of options which easily get an "excellent" rating in all the categories you describe. And you don't ...

Technically mirrorless means there is no reflex mirror for a through the lens optical viewfinder and instead an image is read from the sensor in realtime and displayed on some form of LCD.
However since this applies to all P&S cameras the term is usually used to refer to mirrorless cameras that feature interchangeable lenses, such as micro 43rds, the ...

You'll certainly want the largest sensor you can get your hands on. Currently APS-C mirrorless systems are available from Sony, Fuji and Canon and Samsung. I wouldn't choose Canon as it's the least mature system with only one camera body, which lacks any sort of viewfinder. Samsung is out, as the flange focal distance is 25mm, only 2mm shorter than M mount, ...

Even keeping the same sensor size and lens parameters you will always save space by fixing the lens. You remove the need for a lens mount interface, lens barrels can be smaller as they gain stiffness from being fixed, you can put some of the lens mechanisms (zoom and focus motors) into the camera body, use leaf shutters instead of focal plane (Sony RX1).
So ...

Breaking down your question:
Is it worth the effort?
If you already own lenses and don't want to spend money on digital lenses, you could say it is worth it.
If you don't want to fiddle with the manual focus, it's not worth it.
If you have to use this in an environment where fast focusing is critical, then no, it's not worth it.
This is a bit subjective.
...

All SLDs, other than the Nikon 1 J1, have a mechanical shutter. This is most likely what you hear each time a shot is taken.
Most of them use the mechanical shutter at the beginning of the shot and all of them use one at the end. The latest models omit the front curtain to improve shutter-lag but that is because they found a way to reliable discharge the ...

My advice goes for no, don't switch.
You always have the backup camera in your phone; do you currently even try capturing pictures with that when your big DSLR is away? If not, I suspect the real reason why you're not taking pictures now is not the size of your camera. It's probably either lacking time or dismissing opportunities to actually take some ...

LensRentals.com had quite a lengthy article on this subject a couple of days ago. Basically it works by focusing the amount of light going through the lens on to a smaller area, optimized for the smaller sensors of mirrorless cameras. This increases the light intensity of the image being captured, giving a "1-stop aperture increase".
I'll just link to the ...

This is my quick edit of your jpeg. Lightroom 4. I stretched out the histogram by increasing exposure and darkening the blacks. I pulled down the highlights, increased the shadows, increased the contrast, and increased the clarity. Ten seconds max. It's pretty much exactly what I do on every image when I'm in a hurry and don't want to slave over it. The ...

I don't think I'd write off SLRs quite yet.
What he's calling "third generation cameras" use electronic viewfinders. I don't find the current crop of EVFs particularly useful. I'm not nearly as confident as he is that they're going to improve drastically and quickly either. I recently tested the Sony A77, which is pretty clearly the highest-end camera using ...

I think part of the name confusion stems from the fact that today's "mirrorless" cameras are a fairly recent introduction in digital photography. Where we once were able to distinguish point-and-shoot cameras from DSLR cameras pretty easily, the trend in the industry has been to blur those line more and more.
So-called "bridge" cameras might be seen as the ...